The church of San Francesco della Vigna is a religious building in the city of Venice, located in Campo San Francesco della Vigna, in the Castello district. The current church, built for the Franciscans, was begun by Jacopo Sansovino in 1534 and completed in 1554. Ten years later (1564) Andrea Palladio was entrusted with the construction of the grandiose façade. It constitutes one of the major architectures of the Venetian Renaissance.
The parish of San Francesco della Vigna (established in 1810
following the merger with the nearby Santa Giustina, Santa Tèrnita and
Sant'Antonino) owes its name to the fact that originally the place where
it stands was cultivated with vineyards, the largest and fruitful of all
Venice (belonging to the Ziani family). Near these vineyards stood a
small and modest church dedicated to Saint Mark since, according to a
tradition of the time, this was precisely the place where the evangelist
had lodged during a storm and shortly afterwards an angel had appeared
to him greeting him with the words Pax tibi Marce Evangelista meus
(motto of the Serenissima) and prophesying the future foundation of
Venice.
On the death of Marco Ziani Count of Arbe, a member of
the aforementioned family and son of Doge Pietro Ziani, it was
established by will dated 25 June 1253 that the vineyards, the church
and some shops were left either to the minor friars, or to the preaching
friars or to the Cistercians. Among the three, in the end the observant
minors prevailed and settled permanently here; but since their number
was increasingly increasing, the convent had to be enlarged and it was
decided to erect a new church based on a design by Marino da Pisa (which
was called San Francesco della Vigna), however leaving intact the one
previously built and dedicated to San Marco .
In the sixteenth
century, due to the need of the people, who had settled in the Arsenale
area, to have a new religious center where they could pray and since the
building itself was threatening to collapse, it was decided to intervene
by rebuilding it according to a design by Sansovino and the the
foundation stone was laid on 15 August 1534 by doge Andrea Gritti.
However, problems arose on how to build the facade, the works were
interrupted for a certain period of time, during which even the friar
Francesco Zorzi was consulted, who released his ideas in writing, to
which Jacopo Sansovino himself owed to conform. The philosopher Manfredo
Tafuri in "Harmonies and Conflicts" overturns this thesis by
hypothesizing that it was Sansovino who made use of the authoritative
friar Francesco Zorzi to support his ideas. With the Council of Trent
many things also changed in Venice and the "drawing" of the Grittian era
(Zorzi-Sansovino) was abandoned and so another project was chosen,
presented by Palladio in 1562; and it is perhaps to these disputes that
the two inscriptions on the façade (Non sine jugi exteriori and
Interiorique bello) refer. Finally completed, the church was consecrated
on 2 August 1582 by Giulio Superchio, bishop of Caorle. In 1581, the
monastery housed 63 religious.
After the unfortunate Venetian debut of San Pietro di Castello by
Andrea Palladio, it was very probably once again Daniele Barbaro who
favored a commission for the Paduan architect, convincing the patriarch
of Aquileia Giovanni Grimani to entrust him with the construction of the
facade of San Francesco della Vineyard. Choice of no small significance,
because in fact it ousted Jacopo Sansovino, who had built the church
thirty years earlier (also preparing drawings for the facade),
preferring Palladio, who thus imposed himself as a concrete alternative,
supported by the culturally more advanced part of the patriciate
Venetian, to the now elderly protagonist of the architectural renewal of
Piazza San Marco. Giovanni Grimani, a man of sophisticated tastes and a
refined collector of Roman antiquities, had undergone an insidious trial
for heresy in 1563: acquitted of the charges, he transformed the
construction of the facade of San Francesco into an occasion for private
self-celebration.
On the night of 23 June 1916, the church was
bombed by an Austrian seaplane, which damaged a triptych from the
Vivarini school and the sacristy.
Even the convent, made up of two cloisters, the larger of which was
used as a cemetery, underwent some restoration in those years but,
following the suppression of religious orders during the Napoleonic
period, was transformed into barracks. And it was also assigned to this
function after the readmission of the observing minors to Venice in
1836, by force of circumstances they had to go and live in a second
convent, founded in the fifteenth century by Maria Benedetta princess of
Carignano and Angela Canal for the Franciscan tertiaries. After having
enlarged it themselves, having also incorporated the Palazzo della
Nunciatura, finally in 1866 they were able to return to their ancient
convent (bought by the Commissariat of the Holy Land).
Many
Venetian nobles were buried here. Today, temporary exhibitions and
concerts take place in the two cloisters; furthermore they are used as
pavilions for some exhibitions of the Biennale. The convent hosts an
ecumenical and multi-religious banquet of theology students and
professors from all over the world, numerous Jewish Bibles and the first
printed copy of the Koran, the oldest vine in Venice dating back to the
13th century. Here Teroldego del Trentino vines and Refosco del Friuli
vines are grown, combined to produce a wine called "Harmonia Mundi". The
hermetic friar Francesco also belonged to the noble Zorzi family, owner
of the lands then donated by the Franciscans, who in 1525 published the
treatise entitled De harmonia mundi.
The library of San Francesco della Vigna is located in the convent.
Already in 1260 a "cenacolo that brought together the city's men of
letters" met here, but the first certain news of the library's existence
dates back to 2 August 1437, when Pope Eugene IV ordered that the books
of the deceased friars were not dispersed but remained in the convent.
Andrea Bragantin and Girolamo Badoer during the fifteenth century
donated many gold sequins for the expansion of the library. It was
increasingly enlarged, and was also frequented by lay people.
This library too was subjected to seizures made in the Napoleonic era.
From 1877 the library was reconstituted and, thanks to bequests and
donations from friars and lay people, expanded in the literary heritage.
The San Bernardino Institute for Ecumenical Studies has been located in
the convent since 1989.
The patrimony consists of approximately
80,000 cataloged modern volumes and approximately 13,000 ancient books.
The library also holds works from some Franciscan monasteries that have
been closed for a few years.
The very high bell tower of San Francesco della Vigna (which closely resembles that of San Marco) instead began to be built in 1543; in 1581 Bernardino Ongarin erected the final part and was forced to close the openings towards the Arsenale (the architect was later buried at the foot of the immense structure); on 21 September 1758 the building was struck by lightning and was restored two years later. In 1779, however, the spire was completely rebuilt like the pre-existing one. It is about 70 meters high.
Facade
From Leon Battista Alberti onwards, Renaissance architects
undertook the difficult attempt to adapt the front of a single-chamber
building, such as the ancient temple, to the multi-nave plan of
Christian churches. With the facade of the church of San Francesco della
Vigna, Palladio offers his first concrete response to the theme, after
the unfortunate commitment - substantially only in planning - of San
Pietro di Castello. Projecting the main nave, covered by a large
tympanum, and the two lateral ones covered by two semi-gables onto a
single level, the compositional problem was constituted by the organic
connection of the two systems and the modular relationship of the two
orders, the main one called to support the tympanum principal and minor
the two semi-tympani. The solution created by Palladio is brilliant,
even if it forces him to place both orders on the same high base: a
difficulty that will be easily overcome in the facade of the basilica of
the Redeemer, by placing a large staircase before the central section of
the facade.
The enormous bronze statues present in the niches of
the façade depicting Moses (on the left) and Saint Paul (on the right)
were instead executed by Tiziano Aspetti according to the testamentary
will of Grimani himself.
Internal
The church, with a Latin
cross plan, has a large central nave flanked by five chapels on each
side which function according to the new classical conception as lateral
naves; the space of the naves, in principle punctuated only by isolated
pillars with support function for the arches, is divided by walls that
end in the surrounding wall thus creating individually concluded spaces.
The walkable surface of the individual chapels, closed at the front by a
marble balustrade, is raised with respect to that of the main nave by
means of three steps which also extend along the transept (thus forming
a "T" shape). They became funeral chapels for the families who had
funded its construction.
Counter facade
On the counter-façade,
on the right, there is the Madonna with Child, a polychrome Byzantine
relief from the 12th century, while on the left, Saints Jerome,
Bernardino of Siena and Louis of Toulouse, a triptych by Antonio
Vivarini, restored in 1982.
On the stoups there are the bronze
statuettes of San Giovanni Battista and San Francesco, signed by
Alessandro Vittoria.
The church ends with a deep presbytery with
a perfectly rectangular plan divided into two parts by an altar behind
which was the friars' choir. A peculiarity of this part of the church is
that between the perimeter wall and the internal one which defines the
width of the presbytery there are two side corridors which end in two
minor chapels (that of San Bonaventura and that of San Diego).
The side entrances open into the two end walls of the head of the
transept: on the left that of the convent, on the right the public one,
called Porta di Terra Santa, which leads into the adjacent field
obtained by eliminating the space dedicated to the vegetable garden.
Side chapels
The side chapels, which house illustrious burials,
were decorated at the expense of the Venetian nobility: on the right are
the Bragadin, the Badoer-Surian, the Contarini, the Malipiero-Badoer,
the Barbaro and the Morosini (or delle Sbarre) while on the left the
Grimani, Montefeltro, Basso-Sagredo, Dandolo, Giustinian "della Salute"
and finally Priuli
The Sacred Chapel
to the left of the
entrance with the statue of Blessed Gherardo Sagredo by Andrea Cominelli
and other sculptures by Antonio Gai.
Inside the church it is
possible to admire the altarpiece of the Dolfins and the Holy
Conversation by Giovanni Bellini.
On the left side the sixth
chapel, also known as the Priuli chapel, is dedicated to San Pasquale
Baylon represented in a wooden statue of 1691 by the Val Gardena
sculptor Marchiò Molziner. On the right side the fourth chapel, known as
Malipiero Badoer, is dedicated to the Resurrection and the altar houses
the altarpiece Resurrection of Christ by Paolo Veronese (1560).
Triadano Gritti († 1474)
Andrea Bragadin (d. 1487) (governor of
Famagusta)
Andrea Gritti († 1538) (77th doge)
Jerome Bragadin (†
1545) (nobleman)
Matteo da Bascio († 1552) (founder of the Order of
Friars Minor Capuchin)
Marcantonio Trevisan († 1554) (80th doge)
Christopher Surian (d. 1563)
Giovanni Grimani († 1593) (cardinal and
patriarch)
Alvise Gritti Mocenigo († 1610)
Leonardo Foscarini (†
1616)
Francesco Contarini († 1624) (95th doge)
Nicolò Sagredo (†
1676) (105th Doge)
Alvise Contarini († 1684) (106th Doge)
Luigi
Sagredo (d. 1688) (patriarch)
Bartolomeo Gradenigo († 1778)
Domenico Trevisan (politician)
Ermolao Barbaro
Jehoshaphat
Barbarian
Julius Caesar Gonzaga († 1600). The identity of this member
of the Gonzaga family, buried in the cloister of the church, is
uncertain.
The cabalistic measures of the Church of San Francesco
della Vigna
Francesco Zorzi was a Franciscan in charge of the works
for the building of the church. He was an expert in cabala and was based
on the number 3, as he wanted the proportions of the building to
include, in addition to the symbol of the Trinity, also the Pythagorean
musical consonances, so that the church "fully reflected the universal
harmony". according to the principles of hermeticism. The church was to
be 3 times the width in length: 27 (3x9) feet long by 9 (3x3) feet wide;
the side chapels had to be 3 feet wide (Venetian foot, cm. 35.09) and
the chapel behind the altar had to measure 6 feet wide by 9 long. The
number 3 recalls the fundamental notes of the Pythagorean musical
tradition (Do, Sol, Mi) which in the musical cabala expressed the Holy
Spirit (Do - Body - length of the nave), the Son (Mi - the Soul - the
width of the side chapels ) and finally the Father (Sol - the Spirit -
the height of the chapel behind the choir). Furthermore, for Zorzi, the
ratios of the dimensions of the church had to correspond to the musical
intervals: the dimensional ratios of the church 4/3 correspond, for
example, to the Fourth, the ratios 3/6 to the Octave and the ratios 6/9
to the Fifth.